Professor Matt Richardson, UT subject specialist Lindsey Schell, and School of Information student Kristen Hogan have banded together to create and launch a fabulous new library resource for UT students and Austin community members.
The Black Queer Studies Collection is a cataloged creation that makes searching for works by queer people of color much less time consuming. With the addition of this new tool to the University’s library system, a localized note will now appear in the online catalog listings of works by, for and about Black Diasporic LGBTQ people.
“Current information organization practice frequently obscures access to materials by and/or about historically marginalized communities, particularly lesbian, gay, and transgender communities of color. This erasure results in a lack not only of appropriate materials in users’ search results, but also of sufficient context for the incomplete list materials generated by a search,” writes Kristen Hogan in the BQSC guide, which can be found here.
This sort of institutionalized recognition of the importance of Black Queer scholarship is exciting, and I am looking forward to uncovering some hidden gems thanks to this resource!
This article appears in May 7 • 2010.